Speaking of Redu-ing stuff… I spent a few hours this evening trying to restore some of the Giant City tunes Bob Bruning originally collected on CD a few years back. Given what he had to work with – which I believe was mostly cassette copies of copies of demos and live recordings – the quality was good but not great. Certainly fun to listen to… even if you had to be there for some of it.

I re-ripped a few of these off of the CDs Bob sent and tried to restore some of the original quality by subtracting out some of the mud, boosting the dynamic range and restoring some of the low and high end. This was done with SONAR and a bundled mastering plugin called Vintage Channel VC-64. The Sonitus:fx Compressor and Reverb plug-ins are also used. In some cases the cassette tape hiss is enhanced a little, unfortunately, but I consider that a small price to pay for the added clarity.

Also, as I was doing this, I discovered a tune I’d completely forgotten about. For some reason I’d never pulled this from the CDs and neglected to include it on the “Compositions” page. It’s a great tune – Tell Me Lies. IMHO, we’re coming around to a point in the industry where it’s quite likely fashionable again. Along with the rest… hey, it’s nostalgia at its best.

These files are a little larger than usual – in the 6-10MB range. I apologize if the d/l speed is a little slower here than usual. My provider seems to be rationing bandwidth on-and-off lately.

Tell Me Lies – 6.8M

Oh, Money! – 8.0M
Fly Away – 9.5M
Wizards – 8.0M
I Woudn’t Want To Be Like You – 9.3M
The Answer’s In The Music – 6.5M
Seems To Me – 7.5M
The Same Old Thing – 8.0M
Shakin’ Me – 7.4M
You’re The Only One – 8.1M
All I Wanna Do – 8.0M
Say Something Right – 6.7M

The vocal on this is a little embarrassing (and a lot incomplete – not sure if I’ll get a chance to finish it), but I wanted to post it just because the guitar stuff on it is so much fun – done by my brother Tony.

This was a mid-term project for Arranging: Rhythm Section. The assignment was to take an existing composition and (re-)arrange it. I chose Tequila Sunrise, cranked up the tempo, transposed it up a step (to Amaj), created a chorus (based on an early version of the Eagles’ original), added an intro section and an ending. Everything is synthesized except for the vocal and the guitars – please excuse the flat (non-automated) mix, which isn’t intended to sound great, just demonstrate the arrangement. If the solo at the end sounds in any way funky, blame me not Tony – I cloned it and pulled some key-shifting tricks to get it to (mostly) fit.

Enough qualifiers… enjoy!

Tequila Sunrise Redux – MP3 – 192kBps – 5.2MB – 3:48 min.

Score: Tequila Sunrise Redux – PDF

I laughed. I cried. Sue me.

One of my oldest friends, Brian Malouf, emailed me at about 2 this AM to remark on the Giant City music files archived on the Compositions page. Blasts from the past and all that. It occurred to me that there were actually a number of other tracks I hadn’t uploaded and linked to. Fixed that. Brian also offered some thoughts on digital recording that triggered my finally locating the answer to earlier confusion about mixing multiple audio tracks to a single stereo track using SONAR. The answer came as a function of looking for the information I needed to accurately pose the question. Duh: File / Export… It was almost embarrassing. Obviously, I’ve used these tools too long with just MIDI (and simplistically at that), and still haven’t completely shaken the “analog studio” thinking from the old days – where a mixed performance in its entirety would be recorded onto two-track. Computers… 30+ years and some aspects of them still escape me. Thanks, Brian.

And by the way, I was sorely remiss in not mentioning on that page that the guy who was actually responsible for collecting all the Giant City stuff in one place (i.e., two Audio CDs) some years ago was another old friend, Bob Bruning (faculty member at Hamilton Academy of Music). Thanks, Bob.

While up in MA training for my new job, I got together with another old friend, Brian (not Malouf , from my Army days in Berlin back in the ’70s. We spent some time reminiscing about our off-base apartment on Paulinenstrasse (near Andrews Barracks), the enormous amounts we used to drink, the wacky schedule we used to work (and the wacky place in which we worked). Brian and his wife Barb also introduced me to one of the best margaritas I’ve had in a long time (several, actually). Thanks, Brian. I’m working on reverse-engineering the recipe… though it may take considerable experimentation!

Another old friend finally came back into the picture on Friday: on my way home from MA I stopped to pick up my Lyle 12-string (acoustic) guitar. The Lyle was a birthday present to myself when I first got to DLIWC (Monterey, CA) back in 1973, and I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere here that it’s one of the oldest things I personally own. Over the years it had gotten pretty literally beat to sh!t though, thanks to being lugged halfway around the world without a decent case, being stuck 8” into the sand one day when I took a soft spill on my motorcycle (it was bungie-corded to the sissy bar), being left in extremely dry air year after year here in CT, etc. Eventually the top warped, the neck bowed, it became virtually unplayable, and sat in an old cardboard guitar case (heh… one I got from Brian Malouf back in ‘78, IIRC) for about 10 years.

With the resurgent interest in music last year, I recalled the number of times the sound of that guitar – just an inexpensive Japanese instrument of no real note (NPI) – had been complimented by musicians, studio engineers and the like. It had a beefy low end that’s not characteristic of most 12-strings, which are typically pretty reedy-sounding. Anyway, after looking around for quite a while, our friend Deja referred me to Jane Hamel up at the Fretted Instrument Workshop in Amherst (MA) who agreed to restore it.

“Restore” is actually not the word for what Jane did to this instrument however. She essentially reinvented it, and it now plays and sounds better than any Martin or Taylor 12-string I’ve ever heard, including the T5 another old friend – Bryan … yes, I have a number of friends named Bri/yan – brought over some months ago (Bryan’s T5 still gets the award for most beautiful 12 I’ve ever seen, though – sorry Jane . A new grade-A sitka spruce top was the main ingredient, but everything else was fixed (again, an understatement) and it’s now more of a joy to play than ever. In fact I’m giving my sore fingertips a rest today after having played it most of Friday night and yesterday. Thanks, Jane – you did more than a beautiful job on this old friend of mine!

OK… so this is the first time in recent memory – or hell, extended memory for that matter – that I’ve actually had a better computer system at work than the one I personally own and use at home. I can’t decide whether or not it’s a good thing I recently updated/upgraded my home system. If I hadn’t, I’d definitely be spoiling for a new one right now.

On balance, the new job has definitely been a positive change. I suppose fifteen years of contracting/consulting and/or working for (both real and imagined) startup companies can have a tendency to make one jaded, but the past four days have been quite a pleasant surprise. Facilities are nice and the people are genuine and very friendly, which I wasn’t expecting from a large, “impersonal” corporation. Benefits: excellent, plus. Also, I’ll be getting formal product training right off, which I think is extremely cool (it’s the way I’d do things, anyway, if I ruled the planet).

I’ve already had several deep technical discussions with the team, and it’s apparent the last five years’ experience will definitely be valuable (and valued – what a concept!). The project is pretty much at the start, so I’ll get a good chance to pitch ideas, which is always fun whether or not they’re ultimately used. And the folks there seem more than open and interested in actually listening and considering, which will be a welcome change.

Plus, I ran into Mark – a drummer with whom I played briefly about 10-11 years ago in a galaxy far, far away! That was pretty cool. He’s still going strong (check out here and here), which is great to see. Didn’t know he was working there. Wonder who else I’ll run into.

I’ve finally done some more audio experimenting and learned a few new things.

Thing One: the Larrivée OM-09E’s L.R. Baggs iMix Notch system turns out to have a very distinctly ‘digital’ sound when direct-connected to the Tascam AI (with or without an in-line preamp). I can’t decide if it’s square-wavey or sawtoothy, but it’s definitely not anything approaching the nice, round sine-wavey sound I hear coming out of the thing acoustically. This is kind of a bummer, actually, and what’s worse – I didn’t notice it before – but now I can ‘hear’ this not only in recorded tracks but coming out of the amp when I plug it in, as well. Big, big difference from the (much nicer) recorded sound I get from acoustically mic’ing with the Rode condenser. One might say that’s to be expected, but I would have thought the electronics in the guitar would produce something that’s a little more faithful to the actual acoustic sound, given that it’s far from a low-end instrument (and system). Almost kind of glad I didn’t have one put in the Lyle, now – which, by the way, will positively, absolutely, definitely, no-way-it-won’t be home on the 27th (yes, smartass… of this month!).

Thing Two: having done mostly one-the-fly mixes of multitimbral MIDI synth stuff up to now, it has occurred to me that I’ll be needing to do some creative patching to mix multiple audio tracks down to stereo. I may be missing something obvious, but it’s certainly looking like I need some way (like an SPDIF cable, etc.) to feed the mixed output back into the Tascam in order to capture and record it in SONAR on a stereo track (or pair of mono tracks). More reading needed…

In other news – I’ve been watching the John Adams miniseries on DVD. Very fascinating stuff. Quite different how the violence of the time period has been consciously played down – happening ‘off camera’, as it were – in favor of showing its actual effect(s) on the individuals. This puts a lot more demands on the dialog and the actors, IMHO. Oddly, the music strikes me as a combination of Greg Edmondson’s work on Firefly and some of the passages from Last of the Mohicans (either Edelman or Jones – not sure which). It fits, though some of the scenes depicting The People singing seem a bit strained. Might be intentional, as the times were most definitely strained, to say the least.

I know… lame. But it’s accurate, at least.

I’ve spilled the news to everyone who might care, so I don’t think there’s any problem noting here that… I’ll be changing jobs at the end of next week!

As it almost always is in a situation like this, it’s with mixed feelings, but mostly very good ones in this case. Five years is the longest I’ve spent with any one employer… ever. So there’s some trepidation mixed in there as well. Okay, not much. I’m currently working for a five-plus-year-old company that was recently “rebooted” back to start-up status, and I’m moving to a corporation with over 7,000 employees worldwide, so…

I’ve actually got three bona fide offers at this point, but one stands out very clearly, and I’ve pretty much decided on that one. I’ll be using all the experience I’ve collected over the last five years PLUS finally getting a chance to do work in 3D visualization. That’ll be a first, professionally, since a very short stint as Project Manager for Philips Medical Systems, working on a system that converted CT and MRI images to 3D graphical renderings for radiological diagnosis. That system used the PIXAR image computer, and guess who was pretty much over-the-moon when he got sent out there for two weeks of training – working with and learning from guys like Don Schreiter and Ed Catmull. The Philips system development was snatched back to Holland by corporate when the technology got interesting (read: marketable), which was pretty disturbing. I’ve wanted to do something practical with 3D ever since. This will be a chance. More to come on that.

The Lyle is still in the shop as I type this. Jane said it would take some time, but we’re going into the ninth month here. I haven’t said anything and, although it would be nice to have it here to play, it’s fine with me as long as it takes. Plenty of other instruments here that I’m not practicing on enough anyway.

Anyway – wish me luck!

Ok, sorry, yeah… I got a tad distracted there. I guess if blogging is cathartic, then I haven’t had much need to cathart, as it were.

Been kind of bouncing back and forth between being very busy (at work) and very busy playing / writing and experimenting with the audio stuff. The crap has hit the fan at work and for a while it was all I could do when I got home to fall into a chair and watch an hour or two of CSI before crashing.

Before work got busy, I’d actually gotten to point of fairly comfortable fingerpickingness on the new Larrivée – an OM-09E, as it eventually turned out. That arrived around mid-October from Trinity Guitars (highly recommended, by the way). Jim Holler did a nice job with the strap peg (on the heel, as requested) and the instrument is just a joy to play. It’s a bit unique in that it was pretty much complete and ready to ship as an OM-09, and its inside label reads as such. Jim had them add the “E” – the L.R. Baggs Onboard iMix Notch System pickup – after it had been completed. After only a few days with it, a fairly complete musical idea kind of birthed itself, which was a little spooky. I’m guessing it was the combined inspiration of a new instrument, a completely new style of playing, and having just read a great script my cousin is working to get produced: Red Gold. If the script is any indication, it could be a real classic. He’s earned it.

The ’studio’ is now pretty much complete, for what it’s worth, with the addition of a Rode NT-1A condenser microphone (for acoustic instruments and vocals). I’ve since pretty much completed the Red-Gold-inspired tune and have started experimenting with recording. There are a few (actually, a lot of) passages I can’t play quite as cleanly as I’d like yet, so it’s good practice. Ultimately this will be an orchestral piece anyway, but it does sound pretty nice on acoustic 6-string, I must say. For fun, I did record a quickie cello part, just to see how it sounded. It’s going to be cool.

And I realize how long it’s been since I last wrote, as I’ll also note that I finally broke down and took the Lyle up to Northampton to have it restored by Jane Hamel at The Fretted Instrument Workshop back in September. I’m guessing it should be just about ready by now. Perfect timing to bring the Larrivée up for it’s first set-up, now that it’s played-in and I know what I want the action like. A friend brought over his beautiful, new, one-of-a-kind Taylor T-5 12-string just before New Year’s. Wow. If the Lyle plays anything at all like that once Jane is done with it (and she’s indicated that it will), I will be a very happy camper. If she can do the same with the Larrivée, even better!

As you may see below, Tommy has become a fixture in my day-to-day. I have purchased most of his CDs, a couple of instructional / performance DVDs, and spend way too much time watching videos of him on YouTube. The guy is just awe-inspiring. Part of that, I think, is how accessible he seems – both while playing and in his interviews. To sit and listen to his charming, rather quiet manner, you’d never know that he’s probably the best all-around guitarist on the planet right now. In fact, I should add him to the list of inspiration noted above, as listening to his playing was also a big part of that. It was quite a shock to hear about his recently canceled tour (health problem). Here’s hoping the guy stays healthy, active and playing for many more decades to come! I have to get to at least one TommyFest!

The past week or so has been a series of frustrations. Mostly waiting for other folks to get their acts together. I’m sure I’ve let people down myself in the past, although my ego has blocked the memory for the moment. But the stuff that’s been going on here is getting kind of stupid.

First up we have a bureaucrat at my wife’s school, who seems to think she’s suddenly been promoted to some sort of Administrator position (she’s the ADA coordinator). She’s taken it upon herself to threaten Patty with refusal to let her start her fall semester if she doesn’t comply with the workarounds they’ve concocted to cover for their lack of ADA compliance.

It’s a long, long story, but the bottom line is that she’s required to attend two weeks’ residency each semester, and the rest is done online. It’s a great program, but the residence facilities there are absolutely abysmal. Example: on the day I dropped her off last March for the first shot at this, the temperature there was a record-breaking 28 degrees below zero. And there was no heat in the “dorm” where they’d put her. I quote “dorm” because the building where students are housed is more like a summer camp billet than any kind of dormitory I’ve ever seen (including during 3 years in the Army). The list goes on: no lights on the grounds at night, cobblestone walkways at the mercy of the incessant northern New England frost heave cycle, doorways too narrow for a standard walker, let alone a wheelchair, drainage so poor that the roads turn to instant mud with each rain… and then freeze into an impassable badlands during the night. It’s a joke.

But the issue, really, is that Patty was able to cope with all that (and much, much more) and still be the first student to have her semester program approved (part of the residency activity – all done online, though, so it’s a mystery why it has to be done there). Naturally, we informed the school of the vast deficiencies in their ADA compliance, making suggestions where appropriate – from the viewpoint of one whom the ADA regs are supposedly designed to help. The newly hired coordinator has apparently decided to take that information personally, not sure why. But of course now, on top of dealing with the “fun” of MS AND completing the coursework for her summer semester, Patty has to deal with this idiot telling her she might be prevented from continuing her education because the school refused to comply with basic ADA regulations.

So that’s one… Next on the list are the guys who have my guitars.

My Lyle 12-string, which I purchased in 1973, has been through the mill, big time. In the 34+ years I’ve had it, it’s neck has gotten warped, there’s a hairline crack in the heel (from a motorcycle incident, no less), a few of the tuning machines are falling apart, there are string retention pegs missing from the bridge and it definitely needs a new saddle. But it’s the oldest thing I personally own and it has a sound that has been complimented by more than one studio engineer and at least two professional musicians. I’d like to get it fixed if at all possible, so I took it to a local music shop to see what their luthier had to say about it. Since I was making the trip, I also brought along the aforementioned Gibson The Paul II for a basic setup. Next Monday both these instruments will have been sitting at the shop for a month, with no indication whatsoever when -or if – they’ll be worked on. I’ve called numerous times to no avail. The option at this point looks like just picking them up and starting over somewhere else. Unfortunately, the paucity of luthiers in the area makes it a bit difficult to know where to go next, and I’m getting tired of researching the issue.

According to one of their salespeople, the Nashville B-Bender Telecaster I ordered from Music123 last Saturday was packed up and ready for shipment on Sunday… and it’s been sitting in the warehouse since. Several calls and emails to them as well. The most recent explanation is “The reason it has not gone out yet is the warehouse started shipping everything at the same time so there has been a slight delay although your order should go out soon.” I guess “at the same time” means they’re now trying to save money by having fewer pickups. Like once a month? Not sure what “soon” means. Maybe October. Hey! zZounds!! Why don’t YOU folks carry this item!!! *sigh*

Finally, I had the joy on Monday morning of learning that my boss had either quit or been fired. I still don’t know which. His boss (my new boss) won’t say, and he’s not responding to the emails I sent him asking what happened and, then, letting him know he’d be missed. What I do know is that the reasons he’s gone (there are multiple) are wholly due to the fact that his bosses won’t do their damn jobs. To boot, my new boss is now “out” for a couple days – with nary a mention of this to me – and apparently won’t be back until next Monday. I’m a big boy, and I can certainly manage my own time for the next couple days. That’s not the point though, is it. It is, however, a good example of the sort of thing that ultimately led to the issues that culminated in Monday morning.

Then there’s the 110th Congress…

The move went fairly smoothly yesterday, and the exercise was a good point to clean up a lot of the cruft that has been accumulating behind my desk here over the years. I ended up replacing some long, bundled CAT-5 cables with shorter ones, removed some of the tangle… that sort of thing. Plus, I had an HP LaserJet IIIP sitting on the ‘top rack’ above my monitor (I have an old O’Sullivan Corner Cockpit) that has slowly quit feeding paper over the last couple years (the rollers are just worn out). It’s now history and allofasudden I have LOTS of room to put a growing stack of books on my reading list, plus other stuff. I was toying with the idea of stacking the Tascam and JV up there, but (1) the FireWire cable I have wouldn’t have reached and (2) it would have been virtually impossible to get at the back of either unit to change patches, etc.

I can’t imagine one of today’s HP printers lasting 15 years anymore. Of course they’re about 1/5-to-1/10th the price for what you get in terms of functionality these days. At over 15 years old, I figured I’ve gotten my use out of this one and decided not to take it in again for a repair, which would only be its second. It’s functional, though, so I’ll likely drop it off at the local tech school and let them fiddle with it. Truth be told, I probably have 5 or 6 old computers I should bring along as well. They’re just taking up space. Kind of amazing how many computers I’ve (we’ve) gone through in 17 years living here. I count …

1. Arche Rival 286 Desktop
2. Gateway Desktop #1
3. Gateway Desktop #2
4. Homebuilt (from parts) Tower – Windows
5. Homebuilt (from parts) Tower – Overclocking experiment / Linux
6. Dell Desktop (purchased when I left Meca) – Linux
7. Dell Latitude CPxJ Laptop
8. ABS PC Desktop #1
9. ABS PC Desktop #2 (current -mine)
10. Dell Inspiron 9400 Laptop (current -Patty’s)

Scary. I wouldn’t even want to count up all the CRTs and peripheral crap stuffed in drawers, chests, corners, closets, attic, boxes, basement, crawlspace, etc. The Linux boxes still fire up, as well as a few of the others. None of them older than the CPxJ will run XP or the more recent versions of the various Linux GUI desktops, however. Probably time to take the hard drives out of those and just donate them someplace. If I didn’t throw it out, I may also actually have an old Atari 520 ST (w/upgrade to a full megabyte of RAM!!!) in a box somewhere in the attic. I’m pretty sure I sold my Atari 800. The Arche was the first “IBM Compatible” I ever bought. These days I sometimes almost wish I’d taken the Mac route. Still could, I suppose.

SONAR’s now updated to Producer ver. 6.2.1. Nice installer. Doesn’t require uninstall or overwrite of your older version (this is discouraged in their Read This First sheet, actually), which still functions fine as far as I can tell. Also does you the favor of tracking down and copying over your previous version preferences and INS settings. This was particularly appreciated, as it’s not a trivial task to get the JV-1080’s INS files installed and set up so that SONAR can make sense of them.

I loaded up the Wannabe Life project, saved it as a new copy (be sure to do this if you ever want to open the original in a pre-6 version of SONAR), moved a few of the outputs around and – after recovering from my initial confusion about the “new” MIDI latency coming out of the sound card (introduced by the Tascam), plugged a set of headphones in (to the FW-1804 monitor) and things sound great! So of course now I’m thinking about a pair of active studio monitors. Since I can simply send the 1804’s analog output to the Audigy card’s Line In, for the moment monitors aren’t really a priority. Although I have a feeling the sound difference is going to be pretty serious, as the 2.1 sound system I’m using came along for the ride with that first Gateway desktop you see up there. I’ll definitely get a pair before trying to actually “master” anything. For now, this works just fine.

Oh, and I’ve decided on Fender’s American Nashville B-Bender Telecaster.